Deloitte CEO Punit Renjen to focus on India, climate crisis solutions

Washington: Top Indian-American business executive Punit Renjen, who recently announced his retirement as Deloitte Global CEO, has said that his future endeavours would include India in particular on nature-based solutions to the climate crisis. “My future endeavours are going to involve India. I'm very passionate about India, and the journey that India is on. I firmly believe that this is India's century,” Renjen told PTI in a recent interview.

Deloitte CEO Punit Renjen, 61, announced his retirement from last month.

As Deloitte Global CEO since 2015, Renjen developed and executed a global strategy that resulted in Deloitte revenue growing from USD35 billion to more than USD59 billion in just seven years.

Noting that India took on the presidency of the G-20, he said this is a great opportunity for India now to lead the rest of the world.

“My focus in India will be around climate, particularly nature-based solutions to the climate crisis that we face around sustainability and skilling and education, particularly for the underprivileged,” he said.

Renjen said he also wants to focus on India based on the work that Deloitte did in relation to access to health care using digital technology when COVID wave hit the country.

“The bulk of my effort will be about giving back, giving back to India and giving back to my home state here in the United States, which is the State of Oregon. Whether it is serving in a public role or just giving back in the areas that I talked about,” he said.

Describing it as India’s century, Renjen said this year it became the fifth largest economy in the world and is on track to become the third largest economy moving ahead of Germany and Japan.

“In the next 25 years, I believe India will become an advanced economy taking care of its 1.4 billion people and elevating a number of people out of poverty. But it is also an opportunity for India in India's own way to lead on some of the critical issues that we face,” he said.

Observing that the Indian government and Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a more sustainable way of living, he said: “That is the way our heritage calls for us. Indians and India are just socially very environmentally conscious”.

“We have moved away from that. We need to come back to it. So, I believe that it will certainly over the next number of years take political advantages that India enjoys a young population, a democratic institutions, the rule of law, the ability to leverage like we did with services, or manufacturing capability,” he said. “I think from an economic and political standpoint, the next 25 years will catapult India into the leading economies and societies of the world. But I believe India must lead on other issues like climate, like inclusive growth, like lifting the underprivileged out of poverty. India can do that in a unique Indian way. That is what I'll be focused on as well in my next inningsl,” he told PTI.

Responding to a question, Renjen said there should be a tremendous sense of pride among Indians over what the country has achieved over the last 75 years.

“What India has achieved is remarkable where we were in 1947 and where we are today. It is a completely different world. India and Indians should feel a tremendous sense of pride,” he said.

There is a lot of work still to be done, he asserted.

“And we must as a community come together, put our community first and do the hard work that is required to get India to its rightful place at the head of the table,” he added.

Giving some specific examples, he said environmental degradation or Swachh Bharat is an individual and communal responsibility.

“We can keep our homes. Indian homes are absolutely Swachh. But we need to expand that to our community now. Nature based solutions as an example, planting trees and getting back to the forest cover that we need,” he said.

“Going back to our social fabric of taking care of the underprivileged and the elderly by providing access to good health care, leveraging tools like digital tools and telemedicine. We proved it in the COVID 19 crisis. We can do it. But it will require the entire nation and the entire community to think India First and take our rightful place on the leadership table,” he said.

“India and our heritage are a non-violent heritage. It was non-violence was how we got independence. What is happening in Ukraine with the invasion of Russia, the Prime Minister was exactly right. This is not the era for war. India needs to lead the rest of the world in taking us to a point where we can resolve issues of conflict with dialogue with compromise,” Renjen said.

Global Indian, he said, can play a very big role now.

“We all need to contribute back certainly to the communities. ….We have capabilities, we have resources and we must contribute back to India to help in whatever way we can propel India to its rightful place on the leadership table,” he said in response to a question.

“That is the first point. The second point is telling the India story with pride. I certainly do that over and over again. But we have positions of influence and being able to tell the India story is important,” he said.